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Kant argued that the only absolutely good thing is a good will, and so the single determining factor of whether an action is morally right is the will, or motive of the person doing it. If they are acting on a bad maxim—e.g., 'I will lie'—then their action is wrong, even if some good consequences come of it.
The question before the court was whether "incapable of distinguishing right from wrong" refers to distinguishing between moral right and moral wrong, vs. being able to distinguish what is legal from what is not legal. [3]: 615 The court concluded: "that the term 'wrong' in the statutory definition of insanity refers to moral wrong."
According to Aristotle, how to lead a good life is one of the central questions of ethics. [1]Ethics, also called moral philosophy, is the study of moral phenomena. It is one of the main branches of philosophy and investigates the nature of morality and the principles that govern the moral evaluation of conduct, character traits, and institutions.
The argument from disagreement, also known as the argument from relativity, first observes that there is a lot of intractable moral disagreement: people disagree about what is right and what is wrong. [3] Mackie argues that the best explanation of this is that right and wrong are invented, not objective truths.
Normative ethics – concerns what people should believe to be right and wrong. Consequentialism – moral theories that hold that the consequences of one's conduct are the true basis for any judgement about the morality of that conduct. Thus, a morally right act (or omission) is one that will produce a good outcome (the end justifies the means).
One well-known version of the dilemma, used in Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development, is stated as follows: [1] A woman was on her deathbed. There was one drug that the doctors said would save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered.
The Right and the Good is a 1930 book by the Scottish philosopher David Ross.In it, Ross develops a deontological pluralism based on prima facie duties.Ross defends a realist position about morality and an intuitionist position about moral knowledge.
Moral reasoning is the study of how people think about right and wrong and how they acquire and apply moral rules. It is a subdiscipline of moral psychology that overlaps with moral philosophy , and is the foundation of descriptive ethics .